The Week In Review

Posted by Greg on October 29th, 2012

My wife and I took our kids to some shitty pumpkin patch today. It’s in the middle of a major metropolitan area, and it is billed as a “farm”, although from what I could tell the only thing that it farms is money: Admission for adults is $3.00. Kids will run you $10.00. This is a pricing strategy known in the business as price-gouging bullshit. Here’s what you got for your admission: A hay-ride (a tractor pulling a trailer), a small pumpkin (kids only), access to a bouncy castle (again, kids only, which is a bunch of crap), and for a dollar you could buy a bag of carrots which you could then feed to goats. “Why are we paying to feed their animals?” my wife asked. The answer, of course, is that we’re parents.

Having children will cause you to do all kinds of wacky shit that you would never in a million years do before or after you had kids in the house. If someone tried to get me to pay to feed their animals when I was in my twenties, I would’ve soaked their lawn in gas and burned the words “Fuck you!” in twenty foot letters. But now that I have kids, I’ll wait in line for three fucking hours so I can get a picture of my kids crying on a mall Santa’s lap. I’ll willingly pay assloads of money to see Disney Princesses on Ice, then pay even more money to buy my daughter a toy princess that spins around and is the perfect toy to buy a child if you’re looking for a toy that will rip half of the hair off of their head (which is exactly what happened later that evening).

Entire industries are built upon the child-induced insanity that hits parents. For instance, you can book a reservation on a Disney cruise line, which combines all the whimsy of giant anthropomorphic rodents with the novelty of a Norovirus outbreak. Cruise ships, incidentally, can cost over a billion dollars to construct. Disney will make that money back in a fucking week because parents would rather spend themselves into the poorhouse than listen to their kids cry about Mickey Mouse for months on end.

So we shuffled through the dirt on this “farm” so we could get pumpkins (which were in fact grown somewhere else and shipped to this dirt lot for resale) because our kids would have lost their goddamn minds if we didn’t. And when we recounted the best parts of our day with the kids before they went to bed, we all agreed that the pumpkin patch was the highlight of our day. Parents are nuts.

Exhibit A

On to what you missed the last couple of weeks while you were wondering if they have a Disney Arctic Cruise (yep):

Two Tuesdays ago, we discovered that 24 cups of coffee in under an hour may not be fatal, but it leads to other undesirable outcomes, such as authoring this blog for example.

On to our poll of the moment, which asked you, the literate reader, which band or person was the lamest of them all…

Lamest "rock star", person or band. Go.

Kenny Loggins (22%, 5 Votes)

Poison (17%, 4 Votes)

Herman's Hermits (17%, 4 Votes)

Phil Collins (13%, 3 Votes)

Eddie Money (13%, 3 Votes)

Def Leppard (4%, 1 Votes)

Hall & Oates (4%, 1 Votes)

Journey (4%, 1 Votes)

Boz Skaggs (4%, 1 Votes)

Total Voters: 23

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As we can see, Kenny Loggins took the crown, which should come as no surprise to long time readers. What I did find surprising was the fact that Def Leppard got no votes. The vote that was attributed to Def Leppard was made by me from my cell phone because I could not in good conscience leave them in there with no votes. Seriously:

There should be some kind of law against that.

The sun comes up on a beautiful new day, unless you’re in the path of Hurricane Sandy, and then you’re fucked. But try to enjoy it anyway.

15 Responses to “The Week In Review”

By my reckoning, you and your wife paid minimum $37 for however many pumpkins your kids got from the not-quite-real pumpkin patch. Maybe pumpkins don’t grow well in your state? That is one big fucking rip-off; glad your kiddos enjoyed it. You can tell them what a pathetic trip it was when they are grown and all have a laugh together then.

I can’t remember who I voted for as lamest; I think Phil Collins because he is so, so annoying, and at least you could dance to Herman’s Hermits. Ha. I could anyway, but I’m a klutz.

Yeah, it was basically $36 for 3 pumpkins and two hours worth of entertainment, then another $10 in food, and a few more bucks for carrots. Total tab was somewhere around $50, which puts it well under the cost of taking the whole family to a movie these days, so I guess it’s not all that bad.

On the other hand, no graphic violence, nudity, or swearing was apparent, so it wasn’t as much fun for me as a movie.

As for Herman’s Hermits (they were my vote), really? You could dance to this gawdawful calamity?

Yeah, Eddie Money… Wow. Not only is he lame, but his lyrics make no fucking sense. “Gimme some water, cause I shot a man on the Mexican border”? Is that thirsty work? Why didn’t you bring water along with you? Does Eddie Money have a water powered handgun that left him without water? Fucking moronic.

My husband and I were at a red light yesterday, which happened to be in front of a ‘pumpkin patch’. It was pretty much identical to what you described. Anyway, we had a conversation about how all the parents fit into one of two categories – the picture takers, and the ‘pick a damn pumpkin and jump on the bouncy thing so we can get out of here’ parents.

My wife and I are in the middle. We took a million pictures, AND we couldn’t wait to get the fuck out of there. But yeah, the kids had a great time. Oh, except for my 12 year old daughter who has decided that nothing her family does can be enjoyable, so she sits there and mopes, wearing her too tight clothing and raccoon-like eye shadow.